gray

Etymology 1

From Middle English gray, from Old English grǣġ, from Proto-West Germanic *grāu, from Proto-Germanic *grēwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰreh₁- (“to green, to grow”). See also Dutch grauw, German grau, Old Norse grár); also Latin rāvus (“grey”), Old Church Slavonic зьрѭ (zĭrjǫ, “to see, to glance”), Russian зреть (zretʹ, “to watch, to look at”) (archaic), Lithuanian žeriù (“to shine”).

adj

1. Having a color somewhere between white and black, as the ash of an ember.
2. Dreary, gloomy.
   the era of gray, boring banality and stagnation 1980, Daniel C. Gerould, Stanisław I. Witkiewicz, The Beelzebub Sonata: Plays, Essays, Documents
3. Having an indistinct, disputed or uncertain quality.
4. Gray-haired.
5. Old.
   In a subculture that idealizes youth, being gay and gray does not exactly make one a hot ticket. Older gays and lesbians often relegate themselves to separate and unequal meeting places. 2004, Betty Berzon, Permanent Partners: Building Gay & Lesbian Relationships That Last, page 20
6. Relating to older people.
   the gray dollar, i.e. the purchasing power of the elderly
   February 8, 1800, Fisher Ames, Eulogy on Washington Gray experience listened to his counsels with respect, and, at a time when youth is almost privileged to be rash, Virginia committed the safety of her frontier, and ultimately the safety of America, not merely to his valor,—for that would be scarcely praise,—but to his prudence.

verb

1. To become gray.
   My hair is beginning to gray.
2. To cause to become gray.
3. (demography, slang) To turn progressively older, alluding to graying of hair through aging (used in context of the population of a geographic region)
   the graying of America
   It’s not what advocates of retrofitting the suburbs may have had in mind, but it’s a logical outcome of the graying of America, and of suburbia in particular. 2018-09-18, Amanda Kolson Hurley, “Fake Public Squares Are Coming to the Suburbs”, in The Atlantic
4. (transitive, photography) To give a soft effect to (a photograph) by covering the negative while printing with a ground-glass plate.

noun

1. An achromatic colour intermediate between black and white.
   grey:
2. An animal or thing of grey colour, such as a horse, badger, or salmon.
3. A gray whale, Eschrichtius robustus.
   Log-shaped barnacles become embedded in the hide of the gray. 1971 Mar, National Geographic, page 411
4. (chiefly US, ufology) an extraterrestrial humanoid with grayish skin, bulbous black eyes, and an enlarged head.
5. (US, two-up) A penny with a tail on both sides, used for cheating.

Etymology 2

Named after English physicist Louis Harold Gray (1905–1965).

noun

1. In the International System of Units, the derived unit of absorbed dose of radiation (radiation absorbed by a patient); one joule of energy absorbed per kilogram of the patient's mass. Symbol: Gy
   Coordinate term: rad